Injury and/or disease which affects the muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilaginous tissues, fasciae, joints and/or bones of the body can result in disability if effective treatments are not performed in a timely manner due to scar tissue formation, loss of muscle integrity, calcification of bone joints, and/or degradation of cartilaginous or tendon tissues. Traditional treatments, particularly post trauma and/or post surgery are generally limited to treating a defined joint or muscle group without consideration of supporting or secondary joints or muscle groups which assist the subject in various movements or activities. For example, an injury to a shoulder joint involves musculoskeletal elements of the thorax, proximal extremity and spinal vertebra. To provide effective therapy and rehabilitation of the exemplary shoulder injury typically requires multiple pieces of equipment in order to rehabilitate the muscle groups, fascia, connective tissue and joints which are used to provide proper movement of the afflicted shoulder and proximate extremity.
Current research in related areas of kinesiology and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation have shown that the brain does not typically isolate a particular muscle group to elicit movement. Rather, the brain typically uses neuromuscular feedback to cause a particular movement of a body unit which resembles an already learned movement based on the brain's ability to determine where a particular body part is in space (proprioception) and sensation that the body part has moved (kinesthesia).
Proprioception can be improved through defined body unit movements. For example, juggling trains reaction time, spatial location, and efficient movement. Standing on a wobble board or balance board is often used to retrain or increase proprioceptive abilities, particularly as physical therapy for ankle or knee injuries or an the exercise ball which works on balancing muscle contractions of the abdominal and back muscles.
Kinesthesia is important for gaining muscle memory and hand-eye coordination, both of which are enhanced by repetitive training. For example, the ability to swing a golf club or to catch a baseball requires a finely-tuned sense of the position of the joints (proprioception) and determining whether the joints have been moved into the proper position (kinesthesia) to accomplished a learned movement. These senses become automatic through repetitive training to enable a subject to concentrate on other aspects of performance, such as maintaining balance. During any complex movement, the musculoskeletal system undergoes a wide variety of muscular contractions which exerts multiple forces on the skeletal system throughout a range of motion.
Since the musculoskeletal system undergoes multiple forces during movement, there is a need in the relevant art to provide an apparatus which facilitates effective treatment and/or neuromuscular training of a subject. The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.